


After a Year of Clouds

by AnonymousDandelion



Category: Good Omens (Radio), Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aziraphale is Not Oblivious (Good Omens), Clouds, Crowley's Name is Crawly | Crawley (Good Omens), Depressed Crowley (Good Omens), Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hopeful Ending, Kind Aziraphale (Good Omens), M/M, Noah's Ark, Now with illustration!, Rainbows, Snake Crowley (Good Omens), Sunbathing, Sunlight, The Great Flood, both metaphoric clouds and literal clouds, psa: lying under a rock for eleven months is not good for the mental health, sun starvation, touch starvation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-10
Updated: 2020-09-10
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:28:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26384170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnonymousDandelion/pseuds/AnonymousDandelion
Summary: “Are you all right?”The voice penetrates Crawly’s lethargy as the stone above him shifts position, and he looks up to see a white-robed figure frowning down at him. The face is familiar.Ah. The angel.Thatangel.~ ~ ~By the end of the Flood, Crawly has spent way too much time curled up on the same patch of Ark floor, growing increasingly unhappy and apathetic. All in all, his mood is rather reminiscent of the sky: gloomy and grey.Then Aziraphale comes to check on Crawly and show him something.
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 30
Kudos: 210
Collections: Aspec-friendly Good Omens





	After a Year of Clouds

**Author's Note:**

> Fun fact: This started out as a drabble concept based on the first [Snektember writing prompt](https://puppy-bums.tumblr.com/post/626849798166904832/welcome-to-snektember-like-september-but-make-it) ("Sunbathing"), but then it turned into something more, and ended up having only a little bit of actual sunbathing.
> 
> Also, over the course of less than 24 hours the concept for this piece morphed from being a vague, brand-new kernel of a idea to a full-fledged ficlet, complete with a POV, tense, timeline, mood, and almost everything else having turned out totally different from my original idea. There's writing process for you, I guess.
> 
> I do quite like the final product, however, and I hope you do as well.
> 
> UPDATE: [Unuora](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unuora/pseuds/Unuora) has created an absolutely gorgeous illustration inspired by this story, which can be found at the end of the work. Check it out on [Tumblr](https://unuora.tumblr.com/post/633797664928071680/thinking-about-the-fic-after-a-year-of-clouds-by) as well!

Cold. Wet. Bleak.

Wind. Rain. Fog.

Forty days and forty nights; the days barely distinguishable from the nights; the sky a grim, endless blanket of cloud upon cloud upon cloud.

The forty days are followed by another 150, as the floodwaters swell and churn. Then, at last, the water begins slowly to recede. It takes another several months before there is such a thing as dry land again.

The cloud cover remains through it all, though the storm has ceased; the sky now both rainless and sunless even as the water below dries.

~ ~ ~

By the thirtieth day of rain, Crawly is a small, miserable lump of scales, barely cognizant of his surroundings, too unhappy and apathetic to mark the passage of time.

He’s coiled underneath a stone in the reptile section in the Ark, where his odds are best of being able to camouflage among the other snakes if someone sees him. That was his reasoning at first, at least, when he originally snuck aboard the vessel that was his only chance, short of taking refuge in Hell, of riding out the storm.

Now, he’s just there, curled up beneath the stone, tired and chilly and almost too listless at this point to be concerned about being caught.

He’s not really sleeping, though he does drift in and out of a sort of doze. He’s not really doing anything. Not really thinking, either. Just… lying there.

It isn’t torpor, not exactly. It isn’t _that_ cold on the Ark, just damp and dreary and generally disagreeable. The other snakes are fine. Physically, Crawly is fine. Uncomfortable, but fine.

Is there a psychological version of torpor? he wonders, dully. Perhaps he would have been better off in Hell after all.

It hardly matters, anyway. He just lies there, as the days pass, and the weeks, and the months.

~ ~ ~

“Are you all right?”

The voice penetrates Crawly’s lethargy as the stone above him shifts position, and he looks up to see a white-robed figure frowning down at him. The face is familiar.

Ah. The angel. _That_ angel.

Crawly has time to feel a distant, delayed wave of fear — he’s not supposed to be here, he didn’t mean to be seen, especially not by a celestial entity whom there is no chance of deceiving by pretending to be an ordinary snake — before the angel’s lips move and the voice speaks again, repeating the words that didn’t quite register the first time.

“Are you all right?”

Crawly stares blankly up at Aziraphale. A remote part of his mind is probably mildly relieved, and mildly surprised, to find that he hasn’t been smitten yet, when his presence here is quite obviously unauthorized. Most of his mind, however, is still too dismal and dormant to worry about it. He doesn’t lift his head.

The round face moves, coming closer and lower as the angel drops to one knee on the filthy wooden floor. He reaches out a tentative hand, stopping and pulling it back just an instant before his fingers would have touched Crawly’s scales.

“Crawly?”

Aziraphale sounds concerned. He looks it, too, brow creased and eyes wide as they meet Crawly’s yellow ones.

Crawly hisses, halfheartedly.

The concern on Aziraphale’s face eases somewhat, perhaps joined by a faint tinge of wariness, but the change is only slight. “I wanted to show… I mean, I thought you might like to see… well… that is to say, have you been up on the top deck today?”

Of course Crawly hasn’t been up on deck, not since a few days after the first raindrops began to fall. He did slither around the Ark a bit in those first weeks, to explore, skulking about and staying out of sight of the other human and human-shaped residents on the Ark. He caught enough glimpses of the dreadful, desolate sky and the equally dreadful, drowning world below that he regretted having looked at all. Then he crawled back belowdecks to find a rock and hide.

He hasn’t been out since. Why would he have wanted to go up on deck? He was a stowaway, and besides, it was _raining_.

For the first time, now, Crawly becomes aware of the fact that the steady drumming of rain on the wood above him is gone, and has been for quite some time now. He doesn’t know when it stopped, but it must have been gradual enough not to come to his attention until this moment. He notices, next, that the constant pitching of the Ark itself seems to have ceased as well, as if the vessel has… run aground? Come to rest?

“What did you think I might want to sssee?” he asks Aziraphale, who doesn’t balk at the hissing, just smiles, looking slightly relieved that Crawly has finally responded.

“The rain bow — the sign from the Almighty, if you recall, I mentioned it before. It’s… well, it’s beautiful. But I’m afraid I simply can’t describe it in words, I wouldn’t be able to do it justice. You must come and see for yourself.” Aziraphale pauses, then adds, “Besides, you don’t really want to stay down here, do you?”

Crawly considers this question for a long moment. He’s not particularly interested in admiring Almighty signs. Eventually, though, he comes to the conclusion that, no, he _really_ does not want to stay down here any longer, in the dimness and dampness and animal stench — not if there’s any other option.

“Is it,” he starts, and he knows he sounds pathetic but at the moment he doesn’t even care, “ssafe?”

Aziraphale’s forehead wrinkles further, and Crawly isn’t sure what emotion the expression is indicative of this time. But there’s no doubt in the angel’s voice when he answers. “Yes. The Almighty would have told me not to let them off the Ark if it wasn’t safe.”

Given that the Almighty has just drowned an entire continent, Crawly does not find this reassurance particularly reassuring. He says as much, with all the asperity he can muster, which is very little.

Aziraphale doesn’t even say something piously vague about ineffability, he just shakes his head. “It’s over, Crawly. You didn’t hear? There was a whole fuss — they sent a raven and a dove and there was an olive — well, anyway, the point is, the waters went away. Noah and the rest of the family are out there giving thanks now. They’ll be coming down here soon to turn the rest of the animals loose. It’s safe. The Flood is over.”

“The Flood is over,” Crawly echoes. He’s half inclined to make another sarcastic comment, but no inspiration is forthcoming. Instead, he does the serpentine version of a shivering sigh. “I suppose I’d better get out of here, then.”

“You don’t have to. You could wait until they come to let the animals out, if you prefer.” Aziraphale tilts his head, oddly diffident. “But I did think you might like to come out and see now. It really is lovely, and I don’t know how long it will stay.”

Crawly is still feeling dull and listless, but curiosity is in his nature, and truth be told, he has a feeling that lying underneath a rock for an untold amount of time wasn’t the most healthy of decisions. If it really is over, if it really is safe…

“Sssuppose I might as well come,” he says, and braces himself to make an effort and leave the patch of floor where he’s been lying for who knows how long. He hasn’t been keeping track of the time, but his body is evidently very out of practice at moving.

“Ah. All right.” The angel seems to hesitate, then, with just a hint of uncertainty, extends an arm, down towards the stone and the snake beside it. The invitation is clear, if cautious.

Crawly stares. Aziraphale returns his gaze, and does not remove the proffered arm.

Crawly wavers, but Aziraphale looks so hopeful, and Crawly is still too far out of it for arguing to be worthwhile. And in any case, he _does_ want to know what it is that the angel wants to show him — and the idea of slithering all the way up to the top deck himself certainly isn’t appealing right now, nor does he feel like shifting shapes to walk there.

So he gathers his muscles, slithers up and winds around Aziraphale’s arm, trying to strike a balance: twining tightly enough to be secure, but gently enough not to be threatening. 

The angel stands, and apparently Crawly erred too much on the side of gentleness, because he almost slides off. Reflexively, he tightens his hold.

Aziraphale doesn’t flinch, just starts walking, slowly and as if he’s trying to keep his movement as smooth as possible. After a few moments, Crawly lets himself relax into a more natural grip around the angel’s arm, leaning into the body heat and allowing his own body to undulate with the rhythm of Aziraphale’s steps.

The skin-to-skin contact is warm and vital, and by the time they’re nearing the ramp leading to the upper level of deck, Crawly is feeling revived enough to speak again, although not enough to make smart choices about what to say and what not to say. A question crosses his mind. “How’d you find me?” he asks.

Aziraphale glances down at him, seeming confused by the question. “It wasn't hard. You’ve been in the same spot for the past eleven months, Crawly.”

Crawly’s sudden, involuntary flailing and hiss of astonishment catches both of them off guard, and for the first time it seems to occur to Aziraphale that the fact that there is a demonic serpent wrapped around one of his limbs could be something worth being nervous about. The angel doesn’t drop Crawly or try to shake him off, but he does stop walking, looking spooked.

Hastily, Crawly gets himself under control. “Sssory, I jusst… you knew I was there?”

“Of course.” Aziraphale’s look of alarm abates, but the angel is clearly still puzzled, perhaps a little irritated as well. “The Ark was my responsibility to guard, Crawly. You radiate infernal energy. Of course I knew you were there. How oblivious do you think I am?”

Rather more oblivious than the angel actually _is_ , apparently. The distant, demonic corner of Crawly’s brain makes a mental note not to underestimate Aziraphale again.

But… “Why,” Crawly asks, ever and always and eternally too curious for his own wellbeing, “did you let me stay?”

“What else would I have done?” Aziraphale raises his eyebrows. “I couldn’t exactly throw you overboard.”

Being a snake, Crawly doesn’t quite blink, but it’s a near thing. “Yess, you could.” The two of them have never actually come to physical combat, but Crawly strongly suspects that if they did, the angel would win. Bodily strength is not the serpent’s specialty. “Or you could’ve just smitten me.”

“ _Smitten_ you? But why would I do that?” Aziraphale looks ridiculously uncomfortable at the prospect of something that is, after all, somewhat inherent to his job description. “I _was_ worried, at first,” he admits. “That you’d try to damage the Ark, or tempt Shem, or do something else that I'd need to thwart. But you didn’t. You weren’t doing any harm. So what reason would I have to smite you?”

“Well,” Crawly says, and drawing Aziraphale’s attention to the very good reason for smiting that the angel has evidently somehow overlooked is _definitely_ not at all a smart decision, but Crawly must have left his survival instinct behind under the stone, because he goes on anyway, “I wasn’t sssupposed to be here, you know. Sstowed away.”

“Hm.” Aziraphale frowns, and Crawly tenses, but the expression on the angel’s face seems to be more thoughtfulness than anger. “How do you know you weren’t supposed to be here?”

Crawly doesn’t deign to dignify that question with a response. He’s a _demon_. The Almighty cast him out of Heaven, and Crawly is an emissary of Evil, and the Almighty sent a Flood to wipe out an entire continent’s worth of life, purportedly because of evil. Crawly was most definitely not supposed to have been aboard the Ark.

When Crawly says nothing, Aziraphale continues, calmly, “I was told not to let any other humans or animals on board. Aside from Noah and his family, of course, and the official pairs. My instructions said nothing at all about not permitting demons.”

Crawly opens his mouth to argue with this incredibly faulty line of logic, to point out that the only reason Aziraphale’s instructions wouldn’t have mentioned keeping demons off the Ark must have been simply because it was so, so blatantly obvious that it went without saying. Then it occurs to him that trying to convince Aziraphale that demons should not have been allowed on board is an extraordinarily foolish thing to do; after all, it’s not too late for a retroactive smiting.

Crawly shuts his mouth again.

After a minute, Aziraphale resumes walking.

When they emerge out onto the top deck, the crisp, cool, clean air hits Crawly with a burst of freshness that has him all but falling off of Aziraphale’s arm. He doesn’t quite lose his grip, but he does take a deep, deep breath, then let it out in a sibilant exhale. He’s still feeling lethargic and a bit pitiful, but he’s also already beginning to feel better. Spending months motionless under a rock in a stuffy, animal-filled interior chamber of the vessel was, he decides, definitely a mistake.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Aziraphale’s voice is low, and there’s a smile gracing the angel’s bright, upturned face, soft and sweet and openly wonderstruck enough that Crawly should probably be scornful, but he can’t quite bring himself to feel anything but vicarious joy.

With a guilty start, he remembers that Aziraphale brought him up here to show him something, not just so he could breathe. Crawly looks out at the landscape, stretching bleak and barren as far as the eye can see, lifeless except for the small cluster of humans that is Noah’s family, gathered around a makeshift altar a short distance away from the Ark.

The world that greets Crawly's eyes is damp and desolate and all but dead, and while it may yet come back to life with time, thanks to the seeds and wildlife saved on the Ark and some miraculous facilitation, right now it is anything but beautiful.

The land is not what Aziraphale is looking at, though. Crawly follows the angel’s blue gaze to the curved, colorful prism that arcs across the sky, framing the view in multicolor.

It is pretty, he supposes, this rain bow. Really, it’s quite remarkable; he wonders what radical new laws of physics had to be invented in order to make this new phenomenon possible.

But it’s not the rain bow that catches and holds most of Crawly’s attention, at least not the rain bow specifically. It’s something else, something that glimmers in the air and glows on the wooden deck and sparkles on the angel’s eyes and reflects and refracts in the rain bow as if the colors themselves are somehow made of it.

Light.

 _Sun_ light, breaking apart the clouds, golden rays filtering through the first gaps in the grey and gloom that the world has seen for over three hundred days. Still pale, weak, tentative, as if the rays themselves are unsure whether they are real or imagining their own existence.

But there is nothing unreal about the warmth on Crawly’s scales, or the illumination on Aziraphale’s face.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Aziraphale says again, and the smile on the angel’s lips is in his voice too.

“It is,” Crawly agrees, and they’re talking about different things, but in a way, Crawly thinks, they’re also talking about the same thing.

He squirms, then swarms up Aziraphale’s arm onto the angel’s shoulder, where he has better exposure to the sky. Aziraphale lets him, even lifts his arm to make the move easier, and shows no sign of terror when the Serpent of Eden settles into place, body looped gently around his adversary’s neck and shoulders.

Crawly spreads out on his new perch, positioned so that as many scales as possible are facing outwards and upwards to absorb the light. He lies there, breathing and basking and bathing in those first, faint, thin, exploratory, revitalizing, _glorious_ rays of sunshine, feeling his body warming and his mind coming back to life along with it.

He’s not sleeping. He’s not doing anything in particular. He’s not thinking much, either. Right now, as a year’s worth of clouds begin to dissipate, Crawly is just lying there on an angel’s shoulders, luxuriating in the sunlight.

It is beautiful.

**Author's Note:**

> Again, thanks so much to [Unuora](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unuora/pseuds/Unuora) for the beautiful artwork.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed this! If you have any thoughts and are up for leaving a comment, please do — hearing from you makes my day every time without fail. Regardless, thank you very much for reading.
> 
> Be well, lovely people.


End file.
